Polar Day And Polar Night

The Shroud was complete.

The End had come.

The Light Domain's core, the Primal Sanctum. The once boundless, life-giving sea of pure white Radiance was gone. In its place lay an indescribable expanse… the Cinder-Glow Wastes.

No absolute darkness, no pure light. Space itself seemed draped in a thin, translucent shroud of cinder-ash, emitting a faint, constant Cinder-Glow. The light was not harsh, not warm, not cold, like the final, steady ember-heat at the core of a burnt-out star, carrying a suffocating heaviness of absolute stillness. Countless motes of incinerated law-dust, like the ashes of universes, drifted and settled silently within this Cinder-Glow space.

At the heart of this Cinder-Glow Wastes, a figure hovered.

The Cinder-Glow Walker.

It was no longer the twisted skeleton of burning cinders. Flowing, dense Cinder-Glow matter, like cooled magma, formed a stable, contained silhouette approaching humanoid form. Roughly ten feet tall, its lines were clean and unadorned, as if worn smooth by eons and Termination itself. Its surface was sheathed in semi-solid, dark grey armor plating, smooth as glass, reflecting the dead Cinder-Glow expanse. Its face bore no features, only two steadily burning sources of light.

Left eye: Cold Cinder-Spark, deep as the Abyss's maw, pulsing with the silence of Terminus.

Right eye: Warm Glow-Ember, soft as the fading echo of Creation, flowing with the remnant of Order.

One Terminus, one Genesis. Contradictory orbs, achieving a chilling, soul-freezing harmony upon this frame.

It hovered in silence. It held no weapon, only a staff forged of pure Cinder-Glow Law. Atop the staff was no gem, but a slowly rotating Cinder-Glow Singularity, hovering between existence and oblivion, emitting the faint pulse that governed this Wasteland.

No victor's pose, no conqueror's might. Only the absolute Stasis that follows the shroud of all noise, the end of all strife.

The Walker's "gaze" (if those two light sources could be called such) swept slowly across this new world, covered and fused by its own hand from the Light Domain's essence and Terminus power. Where its gaze fell, points of light began to manifest within the Cinder-Glow Wastes.

Not Radiance, nor Cinder-flame.

But… Cinder-Shades.

Like reflections in water, or imprints of souls burnt to ash. They coalesced from drifting law-dust, forms indistinct, each emanating a faint, unique Cinder-Glow luminescence.

A Paladin in shattered platinum armor, gripping a broken lance, his plates etched with cold cinder-glyphs, eyes hollow, frozen mid-charge.

A Prelate in simple white robes, face softened by fading Glow, a shattered sigil in hand dripping liquid that mingled cinder and light, expression fixed in sorrow and compassion.

A terrified Light-Winged Messenger, wings snapped, body translucent like a cinder-ghost, caught in the instant of the Shroud's embrace.

Even… High Inquisitor Eliathas, resplendent armor cracked and webbed with cinder-scars, hovering above the phantom of a shattered crystal dais. His once pure golden eyes were dull, reflecting the dead Cinder-Glow world, holding a sliver of petrified disbelief.

Residents of Xi Yao, Light Domain's guardians, judges… all who became cinder under the Terminus Shroud. Their imprints manifested here, in this cold, static way. They were the foundation stones of the new Law, proof of the old world's end, silently recounting the Shroud's toll.

The Walker's cold Cinder-Spark left eye regarded these Cinder-Shades dispassionately. No pity, no remembrance. Only the detached record and bearing of witness. Its Glow-Ember right eye reflected the slow, ponderous churn of the Cinder-Glow Law – a great millstone grinding the old world's remnants, covering them, transmuting them into the foundation of this dead space.

Its gaze finally turned to the "edge" of the Cinder-Glow Wastes. There, space grew unstable, viscous, collapsing inward and slowly knitting together in chaotic flux. The boundary of the Shroud, the interface between the new Law and the yet-uncovered multiverse outside.

A cold, crystalline thought, like a decree of law, formed in the Walker's core:

"Order... requires... remaking... The Shroud... is... incomplete..."

The Shroud was not truly finished. This Cinder-Glow Wastes was merely the beginning. The anvil and cage of a new Law, forged from the forced fusion of Terminus and Genesis amidst the collapse of the old. It needed to expand. It needed to shroud the Cinder-Glow Order over all undefined Chaos, over all old Laws still running their "errant" courses.

The Cinder-Glow Walker slowly raised its staff-holding hand. The Singularity at its apex spun slightly faster.

*Hmmmm——!*

Space within the Cinder-Glow Wastes shifted subtly. Drifting law-dust accelerated its descent, drawn by an unseen force, beginning to coalesce, to stack.

A massive, winding staircase began to form, rising out of the void.

The stair was not built of stone, but "cast" from the burnt-out, Cinder-Glow sheened remnants of worlds, shards of law, and the very bodies of the static Cinder-Shades themselves!

Each step was immeasurably heavy. Some treads bore frozen reliefs of half-buried cathedral spires, veins of cinder-"lava" flowing through them. Others were inlaid with massive, lightless husks of Solar Orbs, surfaces crazed with cracks. Some steps were simply piled high with the rigid Cinder-Shades of Paladins, Messengers, frozen in their final postures, becoming cold components of the stair…

*The Stair of Cinder*

It began at the Walker's feet, stretching ever upward towards the viscous, chaotic boundary above the Wastes. The Stair radiated cold, dead, yet unshakeably stable Cinder-Glow Law. It was both the path to unknown realms awaiting the Shroud, and the cold monument to the new world's Order… itself.

The Cinder-Glow Walker set foot upon the first step.

Its tread landed soundlessly. The veins of cinder-light on the step flared faintly, then deepened to a darker hue. A nearby Paladin Cinder-Shade, frozen mid-charge, dissolved into the step as its foot descended, becoming a minute, spear-thrusting relief etched in cinder.

Step by step, it ascended this stair built from the corpses of the old world and its own Law.

With each step, the Cinder-Glow sheen of the tread beneath grew denser, the old imprints sinking deeper into the new Law. Simultaneously, the Stair's upward thrust accelerated, piercing relentlessly into that chaotic boundary!

Where the Stair extended, the edge of the Cinder-Glow Wastes was forcibly covered, stabilized. Viscous Chaos was smoothed, defined, transmuted by the heavy Cinder-Glow Law into new segments of the Stair. Lawless eddies and spatial shards drifting at the boundary, like iron filings to a magnet, were seized, covered, and solidified into cold balustrades flanking the growing ascent.

The Cinder-Glow Walker climbed in silence. Its Cinder-Spark left eye reflected the old detritus and chaos constantly covered and assimilated beneath its feet. Its Glow-Ember right eye "gazed" along the Stair's trajectory – deep within the Chaos, glimpses of other shattered planes, twisted star rivers, and "anomalous" worlds still struggling under old Laws, awaiting the Cinder-Glow Shroud.

The path of the Shroud was long and solitary. The destination: the absolute unity of Law, the eternal cycle of Being and End.

No companions. No hymns. Only this Stair, its foundation destruction, its form Stasis, accompanied it as it moved, silent and implacable, to shroud every corner of the multiverse.

The Stair stretched and solidified behind it, the sole, cold spine of this dead Cinder-Glow space. Drifting law-dust fell like grey snow upon its Cinder-Glow armored shoulders, then slid silently away.

The new epoch, in the coldest, most static manner, unfolded upon the cinders.